This silkscreen, titled Jitterbug, was done by William H. Johnson (1901-1970), a highly trained artist who abandoned Expressionism for his own unique exaggerated dimensions. His career was largely hindered by the Depression and by the shortage of a1t supplies during World War II. Married to a Danish artist, he spent many years in Europe. In the 1950s his erratic behav­ior was diagnosed as advanced syphilis and he spent the rest of his life in a New York State hospital unable to paint. This work is part of the Amistad Research Center collections at Tulane University, the nation's largest indepen­dent repository of African American and other U.S. minority historical documents. The center also holds the largest collection of African American art in the Deep South, named after the great Harlem Renaissance artist and art pro­fessor, Aaron Douglas.